Tidbits of History

May 24 is: National Escargot Day
National Patriots Day (Quebec)

May 24, 1689, English Parliament guaranteed freedom of religion for Protestants

John Wesley was converted on May 24, 1738, in a meeting room on Aldersgate Street, London. This essentially launched the Methodist movement. The day is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day and a church service is generally held on the preceding Sunday.

1775 John Hancock was unanimously elected President of the Second Continental Congress, replacing Peyton Randolph. The Second Congress convened on May 10, 1775 with representatives from 12 of the colonies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania shortly after the battles of Lexington and Concord,

1818 General Andrew Jackson captured Pensacola, Florida

1844 – Samuel Morse sent the message “What hath God wrought” (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, to inaugurate the first telegraph line.

Birthday of Lillian M Gilbreth (May 24, 1878), engineer and pioneer in time-motion studies. Part of the American literary scene with the publication of Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., her son.

1830 – Mary Had a Little Lamb by Sarah Josepha Hale was published. The rhyme is also famous for being the very first thing recorded by Thomas Edison on his newly invented phonograph in 1877.

Mary had a little lamb,
its fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go;

He followed her to school one day–
That was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play,
to see a lamb at school.

The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic May 24, 1883 by President Arthur and NY governor Cleveland. Construction began in 1869. The bridge connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River.

1918 Cleveland Indians Stan Coveleski sets club record for most innings pitched (19) as the Indians beat the Yankees 3-2.
The star of the Indians pitching staff, he won over 20 games each year from the epidemic-shortened 1918 season through 1921, leading the AL in shutouts twice and in strikeouts and earned run average (ERA) once each during his nine years with the club. The star of the 1920 World Series, he led the Indians to their first championship with three complete-game victories, including a 3–0 shutout in the Game 7 finale.

(On May 1, 1920 the Brooklyn Robins went to play the Boston Braves at Boston, in front of a crowd of 2,000 spectators. Leon Cadore was the starting pitcher for the Robins and Joe Oeschger pitched for the Braves. The game was held scoreless until the fifth inning, when Ernie Krueger scored on Ivy Olson RBI single. The game was tied in the sixth when Walton Cruise tripled, then scored on Tony Boeckel single. The game was ruled as a tie after 26 innings because of darkness. Oescheger only gave up 9 hits the entire game, while Cadore allowed 15. If they had played one more inning the pitchers would have played the equivalent of three games.) See comment by Christie Stone below.

1935 – The first night game in Major League Baseball history is played in Cincinnati, Ohio, with the Cincinnati Reds beating the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1 at Crosley Field. 632 individual lamps in eight metal stanchions were erected. In the White House, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a button that lit up Crosley Field, where a crowd of 20,422 fans, sizable for a last-place team in the middle of the Great Depression, came out to watch the game.

May 21 is National Memo Day
National Waiters and Waitresses Day
National Strawberries and Cream Day

Birthday of Alexander Pope (May 21, 1688), English poet and essayist. He is the third most-often quoted writer after Shakespeare and Tennyson. He wrote:

• To err is human; to forgive divine
• A little learning is a dangerous thing.
• Hope springs eternal in the human breast.
• Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

1758 – Ten-year-old Mary Campbell was abducted from her home in Pennsylvania by Lenape Indians during the French and Indian War. She was returned to a European settlement at age 16 in the famous release of captives orchestrated by Colonel Henry Bouquet at the conclusion of Pontiac’s War in November 1764.

Organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Battle Creek, Michigan on May 21, 1863. Distant offshoots are the Davidian Seventh-day Adventist organization and the Branch Davidians.

May 21, 1881 – The American Red Cross was established by Clara Harlowe Barton in Washington, D.C..

University of Chicago students Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a “thrill killing”. in 1924.

Charles Lindbergh touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris on May 21, 1927, completing the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

Bad weather forced Amelia Earhart to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland on May 21, 1932, and she thereby becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

1972 – Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome was damaged by a vandal, the mentally disturbed Hungarian geologist, Laszlo Toth. The work has been restored and now lives in St. Peter’s behind bullet-proof acrylic glass.

May 18 is International Museum Day
No Dirty Dishes Day
Visit Your Relatives Day
National Cheese Souffle Day
“I love Reese’s” Day

In 1631, English colony at Massachusetts Bay granted voting rights to “Members of some of the churches” in the colony. To become eligible to vote, a man was subject to detailed questioning by a church elder.

John Winthrop was elected first governor of Massachusetts on May 18, 1631. Still aboard the ship Arbella, Winthrop admonished the future Massachusetts Bay colonists that their new community would be a “city upon a hill”, watched by the world as an example of righteousness.

Montreal, Quebec, Canada founded May 18, 1642. Named after “Mount Royal”, a hill in the heart of the city. It is on the Island of Montreal.

In 1652 Rhode Island enacted first law declaring slavery illegal. The law was not enforced. By 1774, the slave population of Rhode Island was 6.3%, nearly twice as high as any other New England colony.

1830 – Edwin Budding of England signed an agreement for manufacture of his invention, the lawn mower.

In 1852, the Massachusetts General Court passed a law requiring every town to create and operate a grammar school. Fines were imposed on parents who did not send their children to school and the government took the power to take children away from their parents and apprentice them to others if government officials decided that the parents were “unfit to have the children educated properly”.

1917 – Six weeks after the U.S. formally entered WW I, the U.S. passed Selective Service Act requiring all males aged 21 to 30 to register for military service.

1934 – Congress approved “Lindbergh Act,” making kidnapping a capital offense.

1944 – Expulsion of more than 200,000 Tartars (central Asian peoples, including Mongols and Turks) from Crimea by Soviet Union began; they were accused of collaborating with the Germans.

Apollo 10: Thomas Stafford, Eugene Cernan, and John Young launched toward lunar orbit in 1969.

1971 – Formation of the Congressional Black Caucus.

In 1991 the Democrats in the House of Representatives organized the Congressional Progressive Caucus. In the 116th Congress, there are 97 declared Progressives, including 95 voting Representatives, one non-voting Delegate and one Senator (Bernie Sanders).

May 18, 1980 – Mount Saint Helens erupted in Washington State, killing 57 people, and changing the surrounding landscape completely.

Pack Rat Day
National Cherry Cobbler Day

May 17, 1510, death of Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi), Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Examples of his art can be found at Wikiart.org

1527 – Pánfilo de Narváez, Spanish conquistador, departed to explore and colonize Florida. He left Spain with five ships and 600 men. A storm south of Cuba wrecked the ships and a group of men were shipwrecked in Florida among hostile natives. The survivors worked their way along the US gulf coast trying to get to the province of Pánuco. During a storm Narváez and a small group of men were carried out to sea on a raft and were not seen again. Only four men survived the Narváez expedition.

Anne Boleyn’s four “lovers” were beheaded on May 17, 1536.

England passes Molasses Act in 1733, putting high tariffs on rum and molasses imported to the colonies from any country other than British possessions.

May 17, 1756, the beginning of the 7 Years’ War or the French and Indian War as it is called in the United States.

American Revolutionary War: the Continental Congress bans trade with Canada on May 17, 1775.

Running of the first Kentucky Derby, May 17, 1875: Oliver Lewis aboard Aristides wins in 2:37.75.

1876 – 7th US Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer left Ft Lincoln, North Dakota.

1877 – Edwin T Holmes installs 1st telephone switchboard burglar alarm. Per The first switchboard was installed on May 17, 1877, at 342 Washington St. in Boston, the office of Edwin T. Holmes, who happened to run the Holmes Burglar Alarm Service. The inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, gave Holmes a dozen telephones on loan and helped him set up the switchboard. Holmes hired men to operate the switchboard on hourly shifts and it was used as a telephone service in the daytime. At night, it became part of the Holmes security system.

Alaska becomes a US territory in 1884.

Congress changes name “Porto Rico” to “Puerto Rico”. In 1932, the U.S. Congress officially corrected what it had been misspelling as Porto Rico back into Puerto Rico. It had been using the former spelling in its legislative and judicial records since it acquired the territory. Patricia Gherovici states that both “Porto Rico” and “Puerto Rico” were used interchangeably in the news media and documentation before, during, and after the U.S. invasion of the island in 1898. The “Porto” spelling, for instance, was used in the Treaty of Paris, but “Puerto” was used by The New York Times that same year. Nancy Morris clarifies that “a curious oversight in the drafting of the Foraker Act caused the name of the island to be officially misspelled.

On May 17, 1943, the United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School to develop the ENIAC.

Pres Harry Truman seizes control of nation’s railroads on May 17, 1946 to delay a strike.

Soviet Union recognized Israel in 1948.

British government recognized Republic of Ireland in 1949.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Brown v Topeka Board of Education, reversing 1896 “separate but equal” Plessy Vs Ferguson decision.

1961 – Castro offered to exchange Bay of Pigs prisoners for 500 bulldozers.

1970 – Thor Heyerdahl crossed Atlantic on reed raft Ra.